Multiple private spacecraft will be
ferrying NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon just a few years from now,
if all goes according to plan.
In April 2021, NASA picked SpaceX to build
the first crewed lunar lander for the agency's Artemis program, which is
working to put astronauts on the moon in the mid-2020s and establish a
sustainable human presence on and around Earth's nearest neighbor by the end of
the decade.
But SpaceX apparently won't have the
moon-landing market cornered: NASA announced today (March 23) that it plans to
support the development of a second privately built crewed lunar lander.
"This strategy expedites progress
toward a long-term, sustaining lander capability as early as the 2026 or 2027
timeframe," Lisa Watson-Morgan, program manager for the Human Landing
System Program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, said in a
statement today.
"We expect to have two companies
safely carry astronauts in their landers to the surface of the moon under
NASA's guidance before we ask for services, which could result in multiple
experienced providers in the market," Watson-Morgan added.
This new plan isn't all that new, however.
NASA originally intended to select multiple private crewed landers for Artemis,
to have redundancy in place and to drive the teams building the vehicles
through competition. But Congress didn't allocate enough funding to support the
development of multiple vehicles, so NASA went solely with SpaceX in April
2021.
That decision spurred protests from the
other two finalists for the award, Dynetics and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Along
with a public letter from Bezos to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticizing
the decision, Blue Origin filed a lawsuit, which ultimately failed but held up
SpaceX's lander development work for about seven months.
There were even more twists to come,
however. In October 2021, the Senate Appropriations Committee directed NASA to
choose a second company to develop a crewed moon lander. The funding increase
attached to this order was quite small — but NASA apparently now has assurances
that the necessary money will come to support the second lander.
Congress is "committed to ensuring
that we have more than one lander to choose [from] for future missions,"
Nelson said during a news conference today, citing conversations he's had with
people on Capitol Hill over the past year.
"We're expecting to have both Congress
support and that of the Biden administration," Nelson said. "And
we're expecting to get this competition started in the fiscal year [20]23
budget."
Exact funding amounts and other details
should be coming next week when the White House releases its 2023 federal
budget request, he added.
"So what we're doing today is a bit of
a preview," Nelson said. "I think you'll find it's an indication that
there are good things to come for this agency and, if we're right, good things
to come for all of humanity."
NASA plans to release a draft request for
proposals (RFP) for the second moon lander by the end of the month and a final
RFP later this spring, agency officials said. If all goes according to plan,
NASA will pick the builder of the new vehicle in early 2023. That craft will
have the ability to dock with Gateway, the small moon-orbiting space station
that NASA plans to build, and take people and scientific gear from there to the
surface (and back).
This newly announced competition will be
open to all American companies except SpaceX. But Elon Musk's company will have
the opportunity to negotiate the terms of its existing contract to perform
additional lunar development work, NASA officials said during today's news
conference.
SpaceX is scheduled to land NASA's Artemis
3 mission on the lunar surface in 2025 or 2026 — the first crewed moon
touchdown since Apollo 17 in 1972. The company will use its huge, reusable
Starship vehicle for the job. (SpaceX also plans to conduct an uncrewed test
flight to the lunar surface with Starship, which is expected in 2024.) The
Artemis 3 plan is unaffected by today's announcement, NASA officials said.
Artemis hardware goes beyond Gateway and
private landers. The program also depends on a giant new NASA rocket called the
Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion crew capsule.
The SLS and Orion that will fly the Artemis
1 mission just rolled out to the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in
Florida last week for testing. Artemis 1, which will send Orion on an uncrewed
journey around the moon, is expected to launch no earlier than May.